Lisbon Treaty (No.1)

It is a joy indeed to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). He claims to have DNA that is somewhat similar to what we on the Labour Benches have, although I think that it is slightly weaker. However, we accept what he says, as he will be joining us in the Lobby on the Bill. I am also pleased to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh because he echoed the questions that I have been raising with the Government for some months. Those questions have to do with the procedures that will allow this Parliament to be involved in the opt-in processes, whereby matters to which we have signed up already and which come under the jurisdiction of our courts will be transposed to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. I am also concerned about the procedures that will allow the House to be involved in dealing with matters to do with the proposed orange and yellow cards, and with the implementation of the passerelle clauses. The passerelle clauses relate to various matters, including those connected with foreign policy. I am glad that the Liberal Democrats have focused on the procedures involved, and I hope that the main Opposition party is thinking about them too. I am Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, and my Committee has agreed, along with the Public Administration Committee, to consider seeking a resolution from the Government that would deal with the matters that I have set out. That resolution would be additional to this Bill, and I hope that it would formalise and make concrete and substantial Parliament's involvement in each of the procedures. In that fashion, the way that matters are handled would not be left to the Government alone. The people who read our debates are sometimes more aware of our prejudices than the substance of our discussions. It is important, therefore, that we keep it in mind that the motion makes it clear that we are talking about"““justice; policing; human trafficking; and asylum and migration policy””," as well as matters relating to ““fighting cross-border crime””. People will want to know what we want to do in those areas, and whether the reform treaty will help us to perform better. They will not be so interested in our general prejudices about how someone might have moved away from the positions that he or she took in the European Convention, or about how opt-out agreements were reached—for example, whether they came with or without red lines, and what the substance of those red lines was. My Committee has reported on all those matters and we stick by the positions that we took, but people outside will want to know what the House thinks about them. Two matters underpin—although they might undermine—the House's approach to the subjects being debated. First, there is no clear procedure that allows Parliament to get involved in or to control the opt-in process. The possibility remains that the process could be handled in secret by the Council of Ministers, although I hope that that does not happen. My Committee has examined the conclusions from past Council meetings, to determine how they were written and where decisions came from. In a report that we are issuing this week, the Committee says that the Council is both secretive and eccentric. It is important that the process involved is neither of those things: it must be characterised by openness and clarity, and all decisions taken must be accountable to this House. The second thing that underpins—or undermines—our approach to these matters is that we would not retain the status quo if, for some reason, we decided not to opt in on any given matter. My Committee was concerned about that, and some might say that it is ridiculous: surely, if we do not want to go along with the new Community method established in the reform treaty, we should be able to opt out of it. In contrast, Denmark was not asked to opt out because it has a protocol that means that it can keep its existing arrangement if it does not want to opt into the new arrangements—that is, with the Commission in charge and the ECJ providing the final judgments—established by the reform treaty process. As a result of the protocol, the Danish Government and courts will retain their powers of judgment and control. It is clear, therefore, that the Danish protocol allows that country to underpin—and probably undermine—a lot of our concerns about how the reform treaty will pan out.